


What They Don't Tell You

by the_oncoming_drizzle



Series: The Unnamed [1]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Incredible Hulk (2008)
Genre: Bruce Banner Needs a Hug, Gen, Hulkbusters are people too!, Pre-Avengers (2012), hulk is not a monster
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:53:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27596462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_oncoming_drizzle/pseuds/the_oncoming_drizzle
Summary: "It was a pretty abysmal performance from the Hulkbusters, really. The Hulk hadn’t even really fought back, and he’d still gotten away. The taxpayers should have been given a rebate."A Hulkbuster goes on his first mission and comes face to face with his target: the Hulk. But things don't go as expected.
Series: The Unnamed [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2017469
Kudos: 5





	What They Don't Tell You

**Author's Note:**

> So I was playing the Incredible Hulk video game (from the 2003 movie) on Xbox and kicking Hulkbuster butt left and right when I saw one of the last soldiers from a wave of enemies hold his hands up and shake his head like he was afraid. And then I wondered: “Has there ever been a Hulkbuster that took Hulk’s side?” I mean, Hulkbusters are people too, not just mindless drones. And if you were the only one of your squad left in a fight with an 8-foot green monster, would you really try to take him down? On the one hand, that would be a gutsy move. But I think it would be even gutsier to disobey orders because you realize that this monster isn’t truly what the Hulkbusters want you to think. He’s still got feelings. He’s not evil. And on the inside, he is literally just a scared scientist who is just trying to make it out of all this alive and who doesn’t really want to hurt anybody.

It was supposed to be a routine mission.

Well, as routine as trying to capture a huge green monster could get. For a Hulkbuster, I guess that’s pretty routine.

I had heard that the Hulk had been caught once or twice before, but he’d escaped. No one would tell me how he escaped, but given that he’s strong enough to toss cars around, its probably easier than everyone thinks.

I knew why we were supposed to catch him: he’s an incredibly powerful beast that can level whole towns and could kill innocent people. My job was to protect people from this thing at all costs. I also knew that it was my job to follow orders, not to ask questions.

I’m supposed to be a soldier, not a philosopher, after all.

I hadn’t been on a mission yet, but I had seen footage of the Hulk. Every Hulkbuster has. It’s part of the rushed training they put us through (which mostly consists of debriefings and practice with high-tech weapons that are supposed to give us an advantage). I already knew this was going to be unlike anything I had seen in the Army. I knew how to use the weapons they had issued us. I knew that we were authorized to use any force necessary to bring him down. I knew that the goal was to neutralize and capture him.

But the moment I hit ground, I should have known I was going to be in over my head.

My unit wasn’t the first on the scene by a long shot, and this wasn’t a stealth mission, but it didn’t look like anything had actually happened yet. The truck that had dropped us off pulled back to the perimeter. Helicopters hovered overhead. We were outside a motel in Kansas, the kind that might scrape by with 2.5 stars from an online review. It was in a small town near the interstate. I hoped that the civilians had been evacuated, but I knew there wasn’t much I could do about them now, beyond try to capture this thing before it could hurt anyone.

All of the Hulkbuster units were circled around the motel. I wasn’t exactly sure what was going on. No one on my side of the motel was moving.

And then everything went insane.

 _Something_ busted through a motel wall, flipped an army jeep like it was nothing, and kept pounding forward.

Straight towards me.

In such a situation, you’ve got a couple of options. A gutsy soldier might stand his ground and start firing. A smart soldier might dodge to the side and still find a way to engage the threat. A coward would run away.

And an idiot would stand still.

As it turned out, I was probably an idiot.

I didn’t move. Something in my brain just refused to acknowledge this _thing_ coming towards me as real. My weapon hung by my side, my finger not even on the trigger. I’m pretty sure my mouth was hanging open.

I suddenly realized what was about to happen and threw my hands up in a stupid attempt to protect myself. I squeezed my eyes shut against the inevitable, my weapon forgotten.

And then…

Nothing.

I opened my eyes to find myself staring at a massive, green set of abs. My eyes tracked upwards towards the face.

Green eyes. (As if that should have surprised me.)

The Hulk stared straight down at me, and I realized something: he could kill me if he wanted to. _Easily._

But he wasn’t even moving. He looked furious, his fists clenched and his chest heaving, but he made no move to hurt me. Instead, he just stood there. Watching.

They say that you’ll be hit by a bullet before you register the sound. Before I realized what was happening, the Hulk roared in what I figured was pain and outrage as a hail of ammo pelted him from several directions, including from behind me. (In retrospect, I was lucky not to get hit by any of it.)

Even more surprising than the sudden firing of so many weapons was what happened next.

The Hulk, one arm shielding his face, grabbed me and tucked me against his chest. The next second, it was like I had left my stomach behind me. The Hulk had pulled off one of his famous leaps.

I felt a thud that was most likely him slamming into one of the helicopters, followed by a few more thuds and a few more sickening jumps, but within a minute, we had left the battle behind.

That was around the time I realized just how much trouble I was in and started screaming. Not that I could really hear it. It was like being on a rollercoaster—you scream, but the wind sweeps it away.

But after awhile, I realized screaming was pointless. The Hulk wasn’t going to stop. And who could blame him? If I was being hunted by armed soldiers, I’d run too. And eventually, I decided that the Hulk probably wasn’t planning on dropping me to my death. So, I took the deepest breaths I could manage (not easy when your seatbelt is a giant green arm) and decided to just stay still, seeing as staying still hadn’t gotten me killed yet.

The way the Hulk was holding me, I couldn’t see much (and let me tell you; that was disorienting as heck). I could catch brief flashes of the landscape when he hit the ground between jumps, but not enough to figure out where I might be going. It was all a bit of a motion-sickness-inducing blur.

I wasn’t sure how long the Hulk was jumping for, or how far we went, but judging by the changes in the terrain that I could make out between jumps, we had probably crossed a state border. The Hulkbusters were nowhere to be seen. I still wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. No Hulkbusters meant no weapons that might kill me or make the Hulk angrier, but it also meant that there was no one around to help me.

To be fair, the Hulk _had_ saved me from accidentally being shot by my own unit, but I couldn’t be sure if that was a good thing or not either. _Why_ had he saved me?

Eventually, the Hulk’s jumps got smaller, and he landed with a final, decisive KWOOSH in some woods.

He didn’t toss me or put me down so much as he just kind of slowly dropped me, the way someone would do with a cat. I got up and scrambled away, turning to face him and reaching for my weapon as terror and training took over.

It was just me and this giant green monster alone in the woods. He could kill me and no one else would ever know.

And then I realized my weapon was probably back at the motel, because it definitely wasn’t in my holster.

Once again, I was basically a sitting duck. But this time, I didn’t even have a weapon.

The Hulk growled and clenched a fist, but it looked more like angry disapproval than rage.

And then it dawned on me, and I felt stupider than I had all day.

He hadn’t saved me for revenge. It hadn’t been an accident.

He had just saved me, plain and simple.

I swallowed and took a deep breath, willing myself to stop freaking out. As I calmed down, it seemed like the Hulk did too.

I decided to make the most of it and slowly took off my helmet, so that I would look even less threatening (though I didn’t know how this guy could possibly feel threatened by me). I put my helmet down next to me.

“So… are we cool?” I asked.

The Hulk snorted and sat down across from me. I took that as a yes.

“You, uh… you saved me,” I said, unsure of what else to say. I sat down too.

I didn’t expect him to respond, so the low rumble of his voice was just about as startling as everything else had been.

“You not attack,” he said. “Then you in danger. Hulk save.”

“Th… Thanks,” I managed. I could feel the surprise on my face, in sharp contrast to the grumpy features of the huge green man sitting across from me.

“Why you not attack?” he rumbled.

I swallowed.

“Uhh… I don’t know,” I admitted. “...why did you stop?”

Hulk shrugged. “Not know.” Then, after a pause, “You not look angry. Not try to hurt Hulk. So Hulk not hurt you.”

We sat in silence for a bit. I don’t know if I’ll ever know what he was thinking about, but I was still shell-shocked over him not wanting to kill me.

And I also realized that, in hindsight, that “mission” had been a pretty abysmal performance from the Hulkbusters. The Hulk hadn’t even really fought back, and he’d still gotten away. The taxpayers should have been given a rebate.

Then I realized something else: Hulk had closed his eyes, and the green of his skin was beginning to fade.

I watched in confused fascination as the Hulk began to shrink and rapidly change color. In less than thirty seconds, he had gone from a huge, green goliath to a dark-haired, skinny guy no larger than I was. (I mean, I knew that the Hulk could do that, but seeing it was something else.)

He slumped forward, looking dazed.

After a second, I hesitantly moved forward to steady him.

“Hey… you okay?” I asked.

The man blinked a few times and shook his head like he was trying to clear it.

And then he realized who, or rather what, I was. He suddenly jerked away and scrambled backward with the speed of a scared animal. He didn’t get far because of a tree behind him. He held out a trembling hand in a “stop” gesture.

“L-look,” he said, “I don’t want to hurt you. Please… just-just leave me alone.”

I couldn’t decide if he was afraid of me or of himself. Or both. After a moment, I swallowed my shock and held up my hands.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” I said, trying to keep my voice level. “Look, I’m not even armed.”

I gestured to my empty holster.

“Promise,” I said.

If he relaxed at all, I couldn’t see it.

So I held out a hand and introduced myself, as if we were two guys meeting at work. (And in a way, we kind of were.) It took about thirty seconds, but, hesitantly, he shook it.

“I’m Bruce,” he said.

Most stuff they tell you as a Hulkbuster grunt-soldier is on a need-to-know basis. You need to know that the Hulk is capable of crushing a tank, you need to know that he’s a lot faster than he looks, you need to know that normal bullets can’t do much more than sting him. And you need to know not to be fooled by the fact that he looks like a normal man when he’s not green. You need to know that he’s a monster on the inside.

What they don’t tell you about the man inside is how scared of you he is. They don’t tell you that he seems scared of what _he_ is.

And they _definitely_ don’t tell you his name.

There was a town nearby. After explaining what had happened, I helped Bruce get some new clothes, some food, and some supplies. And then I sent him on his way. I could tell he preferred to be alone, even if he really should have had a friend with him.

Before he left, I told him, “He’s not bad, you know… The other guy.”

I came up with a convincing story when the Hulkbusters finally managed to find me, and then I sent them looking for a monster in the wrong direction.

I called in a favor from the regular army and managed to get discharged from the Hulkbusters. I went back to my old job. And from then on, I quietly kept an eye out for a giant green man—or a smaller, ordinary-looking man—who might need my help. And when SHIELD got wind that maybe the best way to protect the world from the Hulk was to just leave him alone, well… I might have had a little something to do with that.

And then a few years later, I saw the Hulk again.

He was defending New York City from an alien invasion.

He was a _hero_.

Maybe now, the world would finally see what I had seen. And maybe now, Bruce might see it too.


End file.
